"Uh-huh."

"All right, listen here, I'm going to call you every hour. Don't you leave that phone. You hear me, Earl?"

Earl sounded miserable. "I'm sorry, honey," he said.

I couldn't help him out. Instead I hung up, jammed the phone in my pocket and sat in the van, thinking. If I was calm enough about it, I could realize that Sheila was in an unfamiliar pickup, headed directly to the Greensboro Police Department and Detective Marshall Weathers. That in itself should keep her safe. I had to focus on removing the source of our danger. I had to find the money.

I put the van in gear, crossed the two-lane, and started up Nosmo King's driveway. As I pulled to a stop, Bess King emerged from the door of the barn, a red bandanna tied around her head, kerchief style, wearing faded jeans and an oversized denim shirt. She was wearing white tap shoes.

As I drew closer, I realized she was sweating, red-faced from the exertion of dancing.

"I tried to call you again a little while ago," she said.

I just stared at her. How could she be dancing with Nosmo dead and Vernell in jail charged with his murder?

"I can't go home," I said. "Someone thinks I might know where Nosmo's missing money is." And I began to wonder if Bess King might be that someone.

Bess wiped her brow with the tail of her shirt, and held the barn door open. "Come on in," she said. "Let's talk." She saw me staring at her and put it together. "I dance because it's the only thing that keeps me going. If I couldn't dance, I'd go crazy with it all." She walked across the room, grabbed a plastic cup left over from Nosmo's funeral, and ran tap water into it. She stood with her back to me, drinking, until the cup was drained dry. When she turned and walked back toward me, she was all business.

"Tony said you went to see Vernell this morning," she said, and for the first time her expression changed, a spasm of pain moving quickly across her features. "I'm going tonight, when they have visiting hours."

She led me over to a round table and sank down in a chair. I sat across from her and put my hands out on the table, palms down.

"I'm just going to lay this straight out," I said. "I'm not much for dancing around a subject when the best way in the house is through the front door." Bess nodded, watching me.

"I won't ask if you killed your husband. I don't reckon you'd tell me if you did, because if you're the killing kind, then you're the lying kind, the kind to let Vernell Spivey take the fall over something he didn't do. So I won't ask you about that. Same way I won't ask you about the money."

Bess's face got redder and her eyes sparkled with anger, but I didn't give a rat's tail about what she was feeling.

"Vernell didn't kill your husband. I'm going to prove that one way or the other. What I need to know from you is how long you've been seeing Vernell and what you know about Nosmo's girlfriend."

Bess blinked, pulled the kerchief off her head and ran her fingers through her curls.

"Just for the record," she said, her voice taut and angry, "I love Vernell Spivey and we intend to spend the rest of our lives together. And if you think I'm just sitting back twiddling my thumbs while Vernell goes to jail, I'm not. Tony Carlucci is working for me, and if he wasn't so busy covering your tail, he might be a lot closer to finding Nosmo's killer."

Well, if she wasn't a little fireball. I raised one eyebrow and cocked my head to the left.

"You haven't answered my questions."

Bess King never looked away, and I had to give her grudging credit for that. "I started seeing Vernell two months ago. He was here talking to Nosmo and I invited him to stay for dinner."

Bess's eyes grew damp and she stared off beyond me. "He was such a kind man," she whispered. "I couldn't see why he was talking to Nosmo, but that was before I knew about Nosmo and the men he worked for."

"What about his girlfriend?"

Bess focused back on me. "Pauline Conrad?" Bess snorted. "She was nothing but a cheap plaything to Nosmo. He likes them young and pretty and stupid. So Pauline was just perfect. He'd had her for about two years, kept her in a little condo on Elm Street. Two years is usually his limit. That's about when they get difficult and he gets rid of them."

She must've seen the look on my face because she jumped in with an explanation. "No, not like that… He doesn't get rid of them like that. He buys them out and cuts them off." She frowned. "You look surprised, like why would I stick around if I knew all that? Well, I'll tell you why. Nosmo wouldn't let me leave. He said he'd find me and kill me if I ever tried to walk away."

Bess tapped the table with the tips of her long acrylic nails.

"And baby, Nosmo King was one to make good on a threat."

She lifted a curl away from the side of her forehead, exposing an ugly pink scar. "You see that?" she asked. "That's what happened the only time I ever asked him for a divorce. He hit me with the butt end of his pistol and I wound up with thirty-two stitches." The curls fell back in place. "And yes," she said caustically, "he said the only way I'd leave was over his dead body."

"Where were you last Friday?" I asked.

Bess King laughed. "At the Twilight Motel, waiting on Vernell. He never showed."

And that's when I caught her. Bess King was lying.

"Bess, I've got a witness says they saw you go into the Twilight Motel with Vernell."

Her face changed, for a second there was a flicker of uncertainty, and then nothing. "I mean later. I went in with Vernell early, but then he left, said he had something to take care of and for me to wait."

I sat back in my chair and just stared at her for a long moment. I tried to rock my chair back on two legs like Weathers does, but I couldn't do it and look tough. I wanted to look hard, and like I'd made her for a liar.

"Bess," I said, "a cop taught me that when a person lies, their eyes cut up and to the left." Actually, I couldn't remember which direction it was, but I figured I had a fifty-fifty shot at being right anyhow. "You are telling me a whopper."

"I am not!" she cried.

I just looked at her, like Mama would if I'd been fibbing to her.

"Then make me believe you," I said.

I watched her wrestle with it, tossing and turning her options over and over in her head. While she stewed, I looked around the barn again. Every bit of the reception had been cleared away. Even the trashcans stood empty.

At last Bess made a decision, raising her head and placing her hands on the table in front of her, folding them together like a child in church. I figured she wanted me to believe her.

"Vernell was the one who told me about Nosmo," she said, her voice hushed and soft, so soft I had to lean in to hear her. "I'm so stupid, I actually thought the gas station was his only business. Then I found out he was a banker for the Redneck Mafia." Her face twisted with contempt. "That's how come he had so many friends. I couldn't see why anyone would like him at all, but Vernell set me straight. They don't like him, they need him."

I said nothing, just sat there watching her twist her hands together, over and over, as if washing them clean.

"Vernell needed money. He thought Nosmo was his only option. He was in big-time trouble." She looked up at me and frowned. "He said he didn't want to tell you about it. He figured he'd messed things up enough."

So he told her. Well, it figured. I was more of a mother to Vernell than a confidante. And that was how it had to be.

"We didn't mean to fall in love," she said. "What woman in her right mind does?" A quick smile flashed across her face, then vanished. "But he was so kind, and he just listened and listened. I guess it just sort of happened. Next thing you knew, I was no better than Nosmo, sneaking off to motels and hiding lingerie."